Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

Visual Source: Newseum

Some coverage of the keynote yesterday from Netroots Nation:

AP:

What's a frustrated liberal to do? Democrats on the ideological left are grousing that President Barack Obama is just not that into them, and they're soul searching at a big weekend meeting about the strained political relationship as he seeks re-election.

Might they stay home when he asks them to vote for him again?

"We were promised he would be our fierce advocate. And I don't think he has been fierce and I don't think he likes to advocate very much," said John Aravosis, an editor with AMERICAblog who has written about gay rights issues.

But Obama's advisers hope that between now and November 2012 the president can persuade this critical part of his base to turn out in droves again, and the wooing by aides was well under way Friday.

CNN:

Might President Obama and Democrats have a tough time rallying their supporters in the 2012 elections?

If responses from a gathering of progressives in Minneapolis is any indication, the answer may be yes.

On Friday, two of the president's most vocal political cheerleaders tried to rally supporters at the liberal Netroots Nation two-day conference. While the crowd was surely friendly, it was not entirely enthused.

Ari Melber:

This conference is unusual because it was hatched online by activists, not any funded group with a formal agenda, and then evolved into a large and relevant draw for the upper echelons of the Democratic Party (Pelosi, Reid, Both Clintons, Gore, Dean). But it?s not focused on them. Obama felt the need to attend in person in 2007, when he was running for President, along with every other major candidate. But in the off years, when fewer candidates (and the reporters who trail them) drop in, the conference goes on, with three days of programming on policy, organizing, writing, publishing and politics. Most of the time and energy is devoted to wonky, detailed discussions?not presidential scheming or Obama-bashing.

National Journal:

2012 won't see the same level of excitement among voters that 2008 did, a fact that was evident at the Netroots conference Friday when progressives grilled White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer about what they perceive as a failure of the administration on a range of issues from gay marriage to closing Guantanamo Bay. But the campaign is depending on the strength of grassroots, neighbor-to-neighbor communication to help overcome the enthusiasm deficit.

"Anybody who thinks this election is going to be easy is just mistaken," Bird told activists. "We're going to have to fight for every single vote."

And in other news:

NY Times on how to decrease health spending without killing grandma:

Long after questions were first raised about the overuse of powerful CT scans, hundreds of hospitals across the country needlessly exposed patients to radiation by scanning their chests twice on the same day, according to federal records and interviews with researchers.

There's no justification for this in most cases.

Charles Blow has a poignant reminiscence of his own father for Father's Day.

Joe Nocera:

From my vantage point here in 2011, Glass-Steagall seems miraculous. It was amazingly radical, not just for its time, but for any time; it didn?t so much reform banking as upend it. Most notably, it ordered banks to get out of the securities business. As Sisson complained: ?The effect of the proposed banking reform is to renounce investment banking rather than regulate it.? Because investment banking was then the chief activity of the big banks, this was a very big deal.

WaPo on Pawlenty's timidness:

The flare-up between the front-runner and the man hoping to be his main rival encapsulated the vulnerabilities of both ? and the uncertainty among Republicans that either is equipped to go toe-to-toe against Obama.

Dana Milbank:

This nearly caused me to plotz.

Joe Lieberman, first Jew on a presidential ticket, was embracing Beck, the leading purveyor of anti-Semitic memes in the mass media. One of the most visible Jews in America was making common cause with a man who invoked apocalyptic Christian theology in promoting his rally in Israel.

I admire Lieberman, and I?ve defended him over the years when he defied party and faction. But if he shares a stage with this creature, he will surrender the decency that has defined his public life.

Words fail me. Whether it's Lieberman's mishigas, or Milbank's sudden insight years after Joe's constituents, I am reminded of a book I once read: if you can't say anything nice, say it in Yiddish. And the things we have to say about this are not nice.

Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/RvZfX54HOiM/-Abbreviated-Pundit-Round-up

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